Passionate Abolitionist and
Witness to the American Civil War
Passionate Abolitionist and
Witness to the American Civil War
SOME INSIGHTS INTO THE MIND OF THOMAS JACKSON
“He was a fire breathing unionist and also a persistent voice for Black freedom and respect.”
HERE is a small sample of quotes extracted from his many letters that reflect Thomas Jackson’s attitudes towards the racial treatment of Blacks before, during and after the civil war, They reveal his intense moral outrage at the institution of slavery and his forceful condemnation of the behavior of many white people towards slaves and free Blacks that he witnessed in his daily life in America.
As a result of the shock and the intense disgust that he experienced when he unexpectedly stumbled on a slave market in operation in Richmond, VA, he became a passionate abolitionist. He set about adding his voice to those actively opposing slavery and racism on both moral and legal grounds. At his most fervent, he expressed his view that:
“The history of the white man in America, is one long tale of terrible outrage & murderous cruelty and oppression of other races of men. While constantly prating about his own patriotism, his great love of freedom & the his vast appreciation of his own rights he has been, in the mass, the bloodiest and most unprincipled despot, known in history. “
– Oct 12 1862
He was very determined to get his opinions about racial injustice heard. For example, we know that he wrote and privately published several articles condemning slavery. Among them was one he titled “What are we fighting for” which came out in August 1861 at the very start of the war after the first battle of Bull Run.
Sadly we have not been able to recover any of these independently published articles but we do have a good number letters written by him that were published in American newspapers. In addition we have a major collection of his letters that were sent back to his relatives in England and provide us with the most detailed knowledge of the man and his journey as an abolitionist pursuing an unusual strategy. The letters passed down to us cover many years: some were simply focused on family matters but the historically more important ones were long reports of the political events that he saw and heard first hand. Sending these to his relatives asking them to get his reports published in English newspapers was a conscious strategy on Thomas Jackson’s part. He intended to reinforce the mood of the British people not to support the Confederate states even though the country was experiencing a dire shortage of cotton. In many of his communications he forcefully expressed the wish to see freed slaves given their deserved respect, at least to the level where they were allowed to fight against the confederate states.
In his earliest reference to this, (June 21, 1982), he was confidently predicting that there would be
. . . certain victory & an early & successful end of the war, (if ) the poor negro was allowed to willingly fight alongside of & for the whites, and asking no rewarded at our hands but only the liberty God gave to all as a birthright & our acknowledgement of all those great & inalienable rights which we price so highly & hold so dearly for ourselves.
TJ had been predicting that the civil war would lead to slaves being freed over a year prior to Lincoln actually announcing that he would do just that, starting with all southern states that continued to resist the government after January 1st 1863. However Thomas Jackson notes:
The only great drawback is that slavery will be abolished not from any noble principal: Not from the white mans’ innate love of universal liberty and impartial justice, but as what is called “a military necessity”. Such is the meanness of this modern democracy & contemptible conservatism. There is a large class of widemouthed patriots here, who have been educated to love liberty for themselves & slavery for somebody else.
– 06-21-1862
Even earlier, well before the civil war started in 1861, Thomas Jackson was venting his frustration with the attitudes of many of his northern fellow citizens towards Black folk .
For I call every man utterly unprincipled who, for love of filthy lucre, will rob his fellow man of “liberty and the pursuit of happiness” and every right that he himself holds sacred & dear.
I have lost all hope and confidence in a people that have openly proclaimed to all the world that their love of liberty is only skin deep & depending on texture of the hair.
– 12-11-1857
Thomas Jackson despised the disrespectful raw racism that was a widespread in the north as well as the slave-holding south. At its root was the view that African Americans were an inferior race and that somehow they were less affected by the conditions that they were forced to live under than white folk would be. The facts that enslaved peoples had been ruthlessly denied all education and kept in the most primitive accommodations was rarely considered as relevant for this perceived social and intellectual disparity.
However this attitude of inherent racial superiority lead many white men in the north to declare that while they were willing to fight to hold the Union together, they were certainly not willing to put their lives on the line to support the abolition of the slavery. TJ resorts to offensive quotes when he reports on the views of those who have no respect for Black folk.
Through all the north the poor blacks are called “niggers” and the cry of these conservatives is “Who would fight for the freedom of the damn’d niggers?” “ What white man is mean enough to stand and fight alongside of the damn’d nigger?” An yet the slave drivers are forcibly using the same “damn’d niggers” to aid in killing off scores of thousands of our proud whites, simply and only because the white Americans, who avow implicit faith in the equality of all men, practice that faith by preferring the risk of bloody defeat with the “damn’d nigger” forced to fight against them, rather than certain victory & an early & successful end of the war, with the poor negro willingly fighting alongside of & for them, and asking no rewarded at our hands but only the liberty God gave to all as a birthright & our acknowledgement of him of all those great & inalienable rights which we price so highly & hold so dearly for ourselves.
– 06-21-1862
Thomas Jackson was clear-eyed as he recognized how southern societies deliberately enforced strong restrictions to keep Blacks from getting an education and thus remaining unable to easily coordinate any plans for resistance but also leaving them appearing less socially civilized by western standards than white folk.
But all the slave states have laws severely punishing any attempt to educate a colored person, male or female and they were always rigidly enforced. Only a few years ago a northern young woman went to Virginia as private teacher in a planters family to educate his legitimate white children. Not knowing the law & her danger she got at teaching some of the young slaves privately. After a while she was found out at it, prosecuted under the Virginia laws, convicted and sentenced to ten years solitary confinement imprisonment at hard labour.
– 04-18-1864
Revealingly TJ noted how Blacks were also treated as second class citizens by new immigrants to America. The low social status imposed on blacks throughout the country provides a classic example of the caste system at work as exposed by Isabel Wilkerson in her book “Caste. The Origins of our Discontent.”
I have seen labourers at work in Europe for ten pence a day & living on potatoes & buttermilk, & poorly clad in the coarsest of garments & miserably oppressed every way. Yet, when those same men manage to get to America, & find a class lower still & more degraded than they ever were, they, in 99 cases out of a hundred, they join the ultra proslavery party and are as ready to ride rough shod over the poor negro as anybody. . . Such is poor human nature.
– October 12. 1862
In many instances, as well as reporting on big-picture issues, Thomas Jackson’s letters are infused with personal observations that he uses to backup his claims about to the treatment of Blacks.
The contrabands, as the poor fugitive negroes are called, have been fearfully abused and maltreated by our men, almost everywhere that they have come in contact with them. Only a few weeks ago I was coming up from Philadelphia in the railway cars. Sitting near me were two soldiers from the Army of the Potomac. One of them, a good Democrat, was abusing the President for issuing the proclamation abolishing slavery in the rebel states, and said it brought the “Dam niggers over to our camps by scores;” but, says he, “we serve ’em out! Four of ’em escaped across the Rapahannock the other night, where I was, and when they came to us there were so dam saucy, we knocked ’em all four on the head and finished ’em.” I asked him how they were saucy. “Oh! they said they were free now, and did not fear anybody,” was the reply. I told him the poor fellows had been slaves all their lives, and might well be overjoyed that they were at last free; and putting implicit faith in the President’s proclamation, issued under the highest authority of the nation, they thought they had found friends, but met their worst foes. “Yes,” says the villain, “we didn’t want any of their dam’d niggers near us, and by Jesus we served ’em right!”
– 05-17-1863
But despite this constant torrent of disrespect and degradation, TJ noted repeatedly that nothing can be more degrading than to be owned by another human being, to have virtually no freedom to live life as an individual might wish but instead to be subject to the wishes and whims and passions of that owner. That is captured well by Thomas Jackson’s account of a woman being offered for sale in a slave market.
“Gentlemen, I have a very interesting lot to offer you now. This woman is a good housekeeper, good laundress, a good sewer and quick with her needle, a good and careful nurse, kind to children, good tempered, trustworthy, and a very confidential servant every way capable of taking the whole charge of a gentleman’s household.
She has not been used to hard work, but she is young and a very valuable breeder, and she has two fine healthy children. Gentleman, give me a bid. How much for the lot?”
– 10-10-1862 (Extract from TJ’s first hand description of witnessing a slave market)
Until his dying days, TJ could never accept that his new country, founded on independence and personal liberties should be thrown into a civil war over a social system that demanded that some people could be totally owned as property and kept for ever as slaves.
This war of ours shows . . . the most unaccountable inconsistency & selfish perversity of mankind. Here is a nation that started into its independent existence eighty years ago declaring the most devoted love of liberty, the most ardent affection for freedom & the most sincere respect & regard for the rights of men. Then they held five hundred thousand human beings in slavery . . .
The south has nurtured & encouraged the odious institution until the slaves have been increased from five hundred thousand to four millions. This is entirely a slaveowners rebellion, and it is the slaveowners only that began the war and aim to break up the government & dismembered the nation. . .
– 06-21-1862
Having witnessed that slave market in Richmond, Thomas Jackson became just one of the white men and women who, in their own ways, devoted their lives to fighting for the rights, respect and freedom of the Black folk before and during the transformative days of America’s civil war. But in addition to this constant sympathy for the plight of Black folk, Thomas Jackson recorded many examples of his knowledge of the civil and military events taking place in Pennsylvania during the war. His report on Lincoln’s death and funeral and the north’s response to Lee’s marching through the state have been praised as crucial documents filling in important details of the history of America.